


Super Rich Kids

by codswallop



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Appendicitis, Bad Parenting, Dysfunctional pre-series Roses, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I mean epic parenting fail, Pre-Canon, Protective Siblings, candy raver David, moderate levels of angst, teen model Alexis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2020-03-13 15:21:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18943645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/codswallop/pseuds/codswallop
Summary: Alexis really wishes she hadn’t come home from Hong Kong so soon.





	Super Rich Kids

**Author's Note:**

> In my story [Overreacting](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18548998) I wrote the following throwaway joke:
> 
> _“How about when I was sixteen and nearly died of appendicitis because Mom kept telling me it was indigestion and giving me Tic Tacs as placebos until you got scared and called 911?”_
> 
> _“Oh my god, that was so bad,” Alexis agreed._
> 
> ...and it wouldn’t leave me alone until I wrote it into a fic, because I like pain apparently?? And because I needed some pre-series Rose siblings looking after each other; that’s my excuse, anyway.

Dad was away and David and Mom were arguing again: story of her entire dumb life, all twelve years of it. No one but the staff even knew that Alexis was back from Hong Kong, not that she actually cared. It was annoying listening to them yell, though. You could hear it all the way in the east wing. _You’re so selfish, no you, no, you’re the selfish!_ Alexis’s arguments with her ex-BFF Kennedy over who had the most carats in her tennis bracelet had been more mature when they were seven.

David’s voice was getting shriller and louder; it sounded like he was stomping down the stairs toward their wing now. “I’ve been telling you for two days now, I don’t FEEL WELL,” he was screeching. “Do you actually want me to puke all over your Valentino? Is that what you want? I’m well aware that you don’t give a shit about me, but have some fucking respect for the dress, at least!”

“You know you’re on escort detail while your father is out of town, David! I ask you for practically nothing in life—oh, don’t pull that face at me. Maybe if you hadn’t crammed yourself full of magic mushrooms and leftover profiteroles—”

“The shrooms were prescribed to me by Dr. Collins as a relaxation technique, you KNOW that, we talked about it with her on the same day you agreed not to shame my eating habits anymore! And for your information, I had exactly one of those profiteroles and gave the rest to Adelina. Ask her!”

“Oh, don’t think I won’t!”

Et cetera, et cetera, et fucking cetera. Alexis put on her headphones and logged on to her computer to IM her agent about how soon he could book her another gig, preferably overseas again.

“Oh my god, Alexis? You’re home?” Alexis dragged the headphones off her ears to rest around her neck and turned to look at her brother, who was leaning against her bedroom doorway clutching his stomach. “Why didn’t you tell anyone? You weren’t due back for another ten days!”

“I told Adelina,” Alexis said. “There was a sort of an incident. Why do you look like that?”

David tried to straighten up, then winced and grabbed his side and hunched over again. “I’m sick or something. My stomach is killing me. What sort of an incident?”

“No, I mean why do you _look_ like that? Did you piss someone off at the hair salon? And when did you start shopping at Hot Topic? Phat pants, David, seriously?”

“Okay, _harsh_ ,” David said. “I’m trying a new look. You wouldn’t get it, obviously, it’s too cool. Tell me about the incident.”

“Too cool. Yeah. Okay, David.” Alexis made a sympathetic face and turned back to her computer. “You were better off letting Mom pick out your clothes, trust me. Did you actually only eat one profiterole?”

“Seven,” he admitted. “But it was three days ago. That’s not why I’m sick. Tell me what happened in Hong Kong or I’m going to open your suitcase and boot right into it,” David threatened, and he looked gross enough to actually do it.

“Ew, stop! It was nothing—I met these really cute guys who wanted to party a little, that’s all, but it turned out they had jobs for something called the triangle, which made everyone freak out for some reason?”

“The—wait, you mean the Triad? The _Hong Kong Triad_?” David had been looking super pale already, but now he went almost green.

“Yeah, that was it. Something to do with traffic, like, I don’t know what the big deal is, it’s really racist to judge people just because they work for the transportation industry. They were so nice! They took me to a tattoo parlor, too, you want to see?” Alexis leaned forward in her chair and lifted up her shirt, twisting around to show off her lower back.

“Oh my god, I’m actually going to hurl,” David whispered, bent over practically double now, and Alexis put her headphones back on and turned the music up loud as he scuttled out of the room.

*

Alexis was napping off her jet lag later when her bedroom light snapped on, making her sit up with a start, and her mother let out a bloodcurdling shriek. 

“Alexis! Don’t scare me like that! What are you doing here?”

“Um, I live here?”

“Don’t sass your mother, young lady. I really cannot be expected to keep track of all your comings and goings anymore. I only came in to look for my sapphire choker. Have you seen it?”

“The platinum or the rose gold?”

“The platinum, with this dress? Oh, Alexis, really!”

“It’s in my old dollhouse, over there. No, the big one. Aren’t you going to ask me how my modeling trip went?”

“Yes, how was Tokyo? Terrible time of year for it. Be a love and come fasten it for me?”

Alexis got out of bed and came over to do up the choker’s clasp. “Hong Kong, Mom. It was kind of wild, actually. I met these guys—”

“Darling, I’d love to hear all about it another time, but it’s a red carpet night, and your brother’s refusing to escort me, so it’s quite the fiasco. That reminds me, though, it’s good luck that you happen to be here—I’ve just given him a good dose of single malt that seems to have quieted him down for now, but if he wakes up and starts carping on about his stomach again, you can give him a few more of these.” 

Alexis took the unmarked prescription bottle from her and squinted at the contents. “Percocet?”

“Tic Tacs, Alexis dear. He’ll never know the difference, and Mother’s not wasting her precious supply on a case of indigestion.” 

“He looked pretty sick when I saw him earlier,” Alexis said doubtfully. 

“Yes, well, staying out all night being a _craver_ will do that to you, apparently—it's all part of his new independent lifestyle that I’m expected to be supportive of for some reason.”

“It’s ‘raver,’ Mom.”

“I believe that’s what I said. Don’t irritate me, Alexis, I’ve had enough to deal with from my offspring this week. I wash my hands of you both for the moment—it’s time for me to lay down the heavy burdens of motherhood and focus entirely on myself for one night.”

“Right. Just the one night?” Alexis asked innocently.

Moira cast a look at her. “Of course. Tomorrow we’ll have a nice mother-daughter chat, a real catch-up, shan’t we, and I can tell you about all the sacrifices I’ve made to get you to the lap of luxury you find yourself in right now.”

“Mmm, looking forward to _that_ ,” Alexis said. “Bye then, have fun!”

Moira turned back at the door to give her one last disapproving once-over. “We’ll try to do something about your hair tomorrow, too. That cut and colour makes you look like a Sears catalogue model. Sleep tight,” she added, and swept out.

*

It was almost one in the morning and she was painting her toes when the groaning started, quietly at first and then loud enough to compete with Christina Aguilera even through her headphones. Alexis finished her pinky toes, capped the bottle, and waited hopefully for a few more minutes, but the noise didn’t stop, so eventually she sighed and took off the headphones and went down the hall with the prescription bottle her mother had left behind.

“David?” she said, tapping on his bedroom door. “You’re not in your underwear or anything gross like that, are you?” No answer. The groans had stopped for the moment, but their absence sounded suddenly ominous. “Okay, I’m coming in,” Alexis called out bravely, but she kept her eyes shut as she entered the room and then squinched one slightly open until she’d seen that her brother was in fact fully dressed, curled up in a miserable-looking ball in a small corner of his bed. 

“Hey,” Alexis said. “You were making a lot of noise, David. Are you, um. Okay?”

She came a little closer to the bed and realized that he was still making noise, kind of, a low-level keening moan, so maybe he hadn’t heard her. It was seriously creepy, but it was just her big dumb brother, really, she told herself, and went over and sat down on the edge of the bed and prodded him on the shoulder with two fingers.

“David? Cut it out. You’re being freaky. Are you on something?”

David gasped and jerked like she’d just stabbed him with a knife instead of barely touching him, and looked at her like he had no idea who she was, like she was some kind of terrifying thing he’d never seen before.

Alexis edged nervously off the bed. “I’m getting Adelina.”

“No—” David blinked and shook his head, coming back to himself. “It’s okay, come back, you just scared the crap out of me, that’s all. I was having a bad dream, I guess.”

“Oh.” Alexis came over and sat down on the side of David’s bed again. She knew all about bad dreams. She’d grown out of it now, but when she was little she’d had them almost every night, mostly the same dream, actually, about being left alone in a huge empty mall with empty stores, and it was almost always David who had gotten her water and petted her hair and told her silly stories until the chill of _alone lost cold nothing_ seemed far away again.

She felt very adult now and a little sorry for David, with his stupid new clothes and his stomachache and his nightmare. She wasn’t about to pet his hair, gross, but she could do the rest of it, easy. “What was the dream about? Do you want a glass of water?”

“No. I don’t know. I was in a...a desert or something, and this huge bird was tearing out my insides.” David curled into himself again, arms clutched tight around his middle. “ _God_ , my stomach hurts. This is torture.”

“Mom left me pills for you,” Alexis offered, holding them up.

“Yeah, those don’t even help, she’s been giving them to me all day.”

“Oh. Okay, then.” Alexis uncapped the bottle and poured the contents into her own mouth.

“Alexis!” David uncurled in an instant and had a hand on her throat and his fingers in her mouth, trying to scoop the pills out; she almost choked.

“Oh my god,” she spat out, along with a mouthful of little white caplets, wrenching herself away from him. “They’re fucking Tic Tacs, David, _chill!_ ” 

He stared at her, breathing hard. “I’m dying here and Mom’s been dosing me with Scotch and breath mints? Classic. Absolutely classic. Dr. Collins is going to have a field day with this. Are you sure?”

“Um, hello, David, do you seriously think I would have tried to swallow twenty Percocets right in front of you if I thought they were real?”

David collapsed back onto the bed. He really did look awful, and not just because of the bad haircut. “Honestly, Alexis? I don’t know what you’d do anymore. Running around with gang members in foreign countries, getting _tattooed_ —I’m really hoping that was part of my nightmare too—”

“It wasn’t,” Alexis said proudly; she loved her tattoo. “I’m not a little kid anymore.”

“Yeah, and that’s why you have to learn to be fucking careful! There are bad people out there who are going to want to do terrible things to you, Alexis! You can’t just run around on your own trusting everyone.”

“I know that. I’m not a complete idiot. I can take care of myself, though.”

“You’re twelve years old! You weigh like ninety pounds!”

“Ew, David, try eighty?”

“That’s actually worse! Promise me, please just promise me you won’t ever go out and do anything idiotic like that again.”

Alexis decided it was time to change the subject. “Are you wearing eyeliner?”

“What? Yeah, a little.” David touched his face self-consciously. “Um, how does it look, does it look good, or— Okay, but just wait, I wasn’t done talking about your little Hong Kong adventure yet, can we get back to—”

“It’s actually not a bad look for you,” Alexis said. “Make sure you use coal black, though, never any other colour, and only on the bottom lids. You’re all smudgy right now, though, here, let me…” She licked her thumb and went to wipe away one of the smears, but stopped and frowned when she touched her brother’s face. “God, David, you’re like...really hot. I don’t mean that in a gross way, I mean _hot_ hot.”

“Yeah, I’ve probably got some kind of flu.” He tried to push her hand away, but she deflected him and pressed her palm to his forehead.

“David, you’re like actually sick. This feels like a really high fever.” 

“I’ve been telling everyone for _two days_ I was sick.” David succeeded in shoving Alexis away, this time, and curled up into a ball again. “It’s fine, I’ll sleep it off. Go back to your own room. I don’t want to have to worry about you catching this on top of everything else.”

Alexis hesitated. “I could wake up Adelina, though? Or Eduardo? They could probably find you some real medicine, or…”

David looked undecided, too, for a minute. Then, “It’s the middle of the night,” he said. “I’ll survive until morning.” 

“I guess,” Alexis said. “I’m messaging Mom, though.” 

“On a red carpet night? Don’t bother. And don’t say Dad, either; he’s in the Philippines. Go to bed, Alexis. I’ll wake up Adelina myself if I feel worse.”

Alexis nodded, still hesitant. She was good with solo international travel and making strangers want to do things for her and knowing how to look like she knew what she was doing in almost any situation. She had no idea how to handle a sick older brother who’d always been the one to look after her until recently. 

“Okay, well,” she said, backing toward the door. “Quit making scary groaning noises, anyway, you sounded like a dying dog in here before.”

“ _You_ sound like a dying dog,” David said, and Alexis couldn’t help grinning in relief.

“No, you.”

“You. Go on, get out.”

Alexis stuck her tongue out at him and went back to her own suite. There was a message from Marcus on her computer screen.

_need a last minute replacement girl for a Wet Seal shoot in Rio de Janeiro if you can be on a plane 9pm tonight_

Alexis bit her lip. _let u kno l8r have 2 ask_ , she typed slowly.

 _u snooze u lose, baby girl, get back to me soon,_ Marcus messaged back instantly, but she knew he’d hold it for her. Marcus was kind of a skeeve, but he got her good gigs. She didn’t answer this time, but shut the computer down and went to bed.

*

When Alexis woke again, it was half past three in the morning and she was sitting up in bed, heart pounding, mouth dry, totally confused. She wasn’t even sure what had woken her up, a sound or a nightmare, and she was still too asleep to process anything more than _something bad._ There was nothing now, though, and she was about to convince herself it was just a weird jet lag hangover when the sound came again, a terrible strangled shriek, and she gasped and was out of bed running down the hall to David’s bedroom before she knew what she was doing.

She didn’t knock this time. He wasn’t in his bed anymore, but the door to his bathroom was open, light spilling out, and she ran in and froze in the doorway. David was writhing on the tile floor, eyes squeezed shut and teeth bared, wrestling with pain like it was a big invisible animal attacking him. He cried out again and then opened his eyes and looked at Alexis without seeming to see her, his expression dazed and wild. “It hurts so bad,” he whispered. “Fuck fuck fuck it hurts so fucking bad.”

“Oh my god David.” Alexis was down on her knees next to him, afraid to touch him. “David David David oh my god. What do you need? What can I— Tell me what to do, can you hear me? David!” But he had closed in on himself again and didn’t respond. Alexis put her hand to his face and jerked it away again instantly; his skin was burning. “I’m going to go get someone,” Alexis announced shakily. “Okay? I’ll be right back, I promise.”

Her legs somehow carried her out into the hall and then to the foyer, cold marble on her bare feet. “Mom!” she called out. “Adelina! Someone, anyone, wake up, I need— David needs help!”

There was nothing: the echoing silence of a huge empty house. Adelina and Eduardo slept in the guest house sometimes, and the rest of the staff came in at six. She didn’t know if her mother was home yet or not. “Someone _help_!” Alexis screamed, her voice sounding very shrill and small, and it was suddenly the mall nightmare all over again, that vast silent emptiness waiting to devour her and make her into nothing, too.

 _I’m just a kid!_ she thought desperately. _I shouldn’t have to do this! Where are all the fucking grownups in this place?_ The thought made her briefly furious, and the anger cleared her head; she knew what to do then. She could waste another twenty or thirty minutes running around in the dark looking for someone and waking them up and explaining the situation to them, or she could do what one of them obviously should have done hours and hours ago and pick up a fucking telephone. There was one in the hall, six steps away, and she picked it up and dialed.

The voice at the other end that broke the silence was beautiful. “911, what’s your emergency?”

*

Moira arrived home from her night out just as they were lifting David onto a stretcher, and there was a lot of shrieking, some of it from Alexis. Her mother won the argument about who was going to ride in the ambulance with David, though, and Alexis had to wait for Eduardo to get dressed and drive her to the hospital. She didn’t say a single word to her mother for the entire time David was in surgery, and Moira gave up trying after the first hour. 

After about a million years, someone finally came in and told them that the appendectomy had been successful, that there had been a rupture but it had been small and the doctors were fairly optimistic about David’s chances of avoiding an infection, that he’d have to stay in the hospital for at least the next few days, and that they could see him in another couple of hours, although he’d be incoherent and sleepy. That was all Alexis needed to hear; she went for a walk after that. A fast one, to get away from the sounds of her mother’s Daytime Emmy-nominated routine of sobbing and hand-wringing.

Moira eventually tracked her down in the hospital cafeteria, though, and sat down at her table, placing a glass of watery orange juice in front of her along with a sad cherry Danish that looked as though it had been stabbed and was bleeding out. Alexis had been dozing a little bit, or she’d have tried to escape when she saw her coming. 

“I’m very sorry,” Moira said simply, red-eyed but no longer hysterical. “Thank you for being there.”

Alexis sipped the orange juice and pushed the Danish as far away from her as she could. “He could have died,” she said, making her voice and eyes as icy as she knew how. “He still could,” she added meanly. “You’re a terrible parent. Both of you are, but you’re the worst.”

“I know,” Moira said, and her eyes filled up again. “I’ll never forgive myself.”

Alexis looked away in disgust. “Pretty sure you will, though,” she said. 

“I do love you both, though,” Moira went on, and Alexis tried not to startle, but couldn’t help glancing over to see what her face looked like as she said it. “We both do, your father and I. He’s on his way home, you know; his flight gets in tonight.”

“Maybe I’ll run into him at the airport,” Alexis said, getting up from the table. “I’ve got a flight out at nine. You can get the details from my agent, if you even care.”

She paused ever so slightly to see if her mother was going to try to stop her as she stalked away, but Moira didn’t, which was pretty much what she’d figured.

*

David looked completely high and completely drained, when she finally got to go in and see him. The grayish pillowcase had more colour than he did, and there was a disgusting tube up his nose, but he was able to give her a doped-up half grin. “I’m so fucked up right now,” he slurred. “You think they sell this on the street?”

“Mm hm, definitely,” Alexis told him. “I’ve got a guy, he’ll hook you up.”

“Oh god, please be joking,” David said, closing his eyes.

“Duh,” Alexis said, although she wasn’t. “Listen, I can’t stay. I’m flying out for another job tonight, actually, but I wanted to see you before I left. I’m really glad you’re okay. Or, going to be okay, I guess—you still look like the worst kind of crap.”

“Thanks.”

“Any time.” Alexis leaned over and kissed him on the forehead.

“Hey,” David said, catching clumsily at her sleeve as she turned away. “Promise me.”

“Promise you what?”

“No more, um. Dangerous stuff. Like in Hong Kong. Okay?”

“Oh,” said Alexis. “Sure, okay. I promise.”


End file.
